Codes and Keys
by Leli1013
Summary: Ginny thinks of it as being like the state of Schrödinger's cat – the day is a box and whatever happens between Harry and Hermione could be anything and nothing at all as long as she doesn't look.  Companion to "Where we'll always be just you and I"


Disclaimer: Clearly, they're not mine and the title is taken from the song of the same name by Death Cab for Cutie. Also, this is completely unbeta'd so please be kind if you review.

When they were seventeen, Harry and Hermione buried identical corners of their hearts in a clearing in the Forest of Dean where a tent once stood. They go back once a year, every year; always in the fall, once the leaves have started turning and their children have gone away. The first time they returned they came only for an afternoon away with sandwiches in a bag, tea in a thermos, and the coats on their backs. It was only minutes before she was lying on the ground with dead leaves in her hair and her legs wrapped around his waist.

Neither thinks of it as an affair. It's just one day – September 5th – the one day out of the year where they allow themselves to let the world fall away and pretend to be seventeen again and make a different choice. They hide themselves away and sit in a lighter silence than the one they occupied during the war. It's a silence they haven't found since declaring victory and "I do".

When they leave their wife and husband to meet at a muggle bookshop they tell them the truth:

"I'm going out for a bit," he says. "I'll be back for dinner."

"I'm meeting a friend," she says. "I'll be back tonight."

Harry tells Ginny that he loves her and means it. Hermione tells Ron the same and means it too.

(They don't lie. They omit.)

When Hermione returns Ron says nothing about the suddenly renewed brightness in her eyes, the leaves in her hair, or the dirt on her knees. He sees the evidence and doesn't bother to try and ignore it because Hermione still comes home to him at the end of the day and because her children have his hair and it's his ring on her finger. He concedes because he can't fault her for being faithful when it counts.

Meanwhile, Ginny was oblivious the first few days. She didn't notice the fire in his eyes or how he tasted like someone else. It wasn't until she caught a whiff of Hermione's perfume emanating from his coat and the indent of Hermione's ring on the back of his neck that she started to piece it all together. At first she attempted to deny the possibility but then remembered looking out her window at the Burrow one Christmas Eve, watching them sway quietly in the snow all the while feeling like a voyeur. She almost confronted Harry about it. Almost because the following September 1st Harry looked at her and the children as if they were _everything_ and she decided that maybe she was being ridiculous and paranoid.

That September 5th she spent the day looking over postcards George and Angelina sent from abroad with her mother at the Burrow, trying to ignore what her husband may or may not be doing.

"Doesn't it bother you?" Ginny asked her mother. "George and Angelina, I mean."

"Concessions of war, sweetheart," Molly replied with a heavy sigh. "Sometimes we live with them even after it's over."

That night she had dinner with Ron – just the two of them in his home. They talked about Quidditch and the children and just about everything else under the sun except her husband and his wife. That is, until she handed him one of their mother's cream pies.

"Do you ever wonder if there's someone else?" she asked him delicately.

"I don't worry about it," he told her truthfully, "and neither should you. Remember, _you're_ the one he comes home to."

As she watched her brother pile the whipped cream onto his plate she noticed the cuckoo clock she and Harry had given him was missing from its spot on the far left wall, she remembered how Harry had wanted to give him something, _anything_, else because "a cuckoo clock would be just wrong on so many levels, Gin". She looked at Ron and remembered what her mother told her and felt something settle within her.

When she found Harry waiting for her at home she decided to ignore his muddied shoes by the door, the dried up leaves in his coat pockets, and how he smelled like old book pages and a perfume she never wears.

Ginny thinks of it as being like the state of Schrödinger's cat – the day is a box and whatever happens between Harry and Hermione could be anything and nothing at all as long as she doesn't look. She decides that one day doesn't really mean anything and nothing can come of it.

(Years later a sapling grows in the forest where a tent once stood.)


End file.
